


Hunt Them Down

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Gen, Revenge, Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5980576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fool me once, shame on you.<br/>Fool me twice, shame on me.</p><p>Solas learns an old proverb the hard way.</p><p>(Or Cadash will not let sleeping wolves lie)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunt Them Down

The first time it happened, Solas didn’t suspect her in the slightest.

It was a simple attack on his forces. A small battalion of soldiers he’d sent into the Deep Roads had been found slaughtered, a cutting loss, but not an unexpected one. When the news of their deaths reached his ears, he’d thought the incident the cause of the Darkspawn that roamed the caves, nothing more, nothing less.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t investigate, Sir?” one of his men said, a Dalish elf who looked at Solas like ruled life itself. It honestly made the elf uncomfortable.

Solas would have liked to say yes. It seemed improper to leave his followers remains to the Darkspawn. In a revolution like his, every soul counted. Yet, he knew the diversion would only end up robbing them times.

“I’m afraid we do not have the time,” Solas said, trying to convey his regret with his tone. “Send another band down. Ask them to set up an Eluvian nears the remains if they have time so we may retrieve the bodies.”

The man didn’t question his orders, running off to do as he requested. It was almost painful to watch, the devotion they held towards him. Solas poured himself a glass of water and turned back to his set of plans. To him, the matter was done with.

It was only after four more lost battalions, seven missing spies, five foiled plots, and a dead general that he began to suspect something other than Darkspawn might be at work.

* * *

After the fourth battalion, Solas went to check out the Deep Roads in person.

It was a long walk and a gruesome one, especially to take alone. Solas had never been fond of the caverns the Dwarven people had once called home, both in their days of prosperity and now. The Darkspawn, while easy enough to deal with, proved tedious to slaughter the longer he walked.

It was in times like these, times when the silence swarmed around him like a shroud, that Solas missed the company of the Inquisition. They were good company at their best and better than his own thoughts at the worst.

He walked down the path he sent his men, watching the torches on the wall flickered even after years of disuse. Dwarven engineering was remarkably stable. It was one of the reasons he felt confident sending his men into this section of the roads to fetch an elven artifact of his; it was well lit and contained less Darkspawn than most.

The stench told him where his men died soon enough. He stumbled on the oldest group first, the five men piled on top of one another in a manner that implied they were thrown. The cause was evident soon enough; a broken tripwire and burn marks told most of the story, as did the type of wire used.

Carta. Solas didn’t expect them this deep in the roads, but it was possible if they were using it as a trade route. Setting a few traps would be standard operating procedure for most gangs.

Still, he expected his men to be smart enough to avoid the traps of a few thugs.

He continued down the hall. As he went, more and more of his lost men were found, two more bands taken out by traps more elaborate than the next. One set had been flayed alive by rigged dwarven torches set to explode. The other was found in ashes.

It was good work, better than Solas expected. Explosives were tricky traps, easy to detonate on accident, and setting these up must have taken someone skilled at the craft to provide instruction. Solas made a mental note to teach him men more about them, if only to avoid such incidents in the future.

He continued down the hall, finding his two other bands of troops in the same location. He’d sent them both at the same time, hoping for numbers to prevent any more slaughter. Looking upon the corpses, his logic had proved faulty. He just sent more men into a trap.

Unlike his other troops, however, these men looked to be the victims of an ambush, brutal Carta efficiency visible with one look at the bodies. Only Carta, after all, killed men with their fists as often as they did with blades.

Solas sighed, running his hand down his face. He knew he should have looked into this sooner. If he had, he’d only be down five men instead of twenty five. Twenty lives saved.

Even if they would have all perished in the end, those twenty lives still counted for something.

He moved forward, sidestepping past the bodies for the final door. Opening it was simple enough, and as the doors open, he tried to keep in mind that the artifact was still here after all this mess. His men wouldn’t have died for nothing.

When his gaze met an empty table with nothing on it but a note, his jaw actually fell open.

“What?” He stood forward, ripping the note off the table. The message was simple enough, but Solas found himself reading it multiple times, if only to try to force it to make sense.

_“The Carta Always Gets It’s Cut.”_

It didn’t add up. The Carta would have no use for the artifact he wanted. It was worth nothing on any market, and he doubted the Carta would have seen nothing but a bare stone when they spotted it. For them to know its true value, they would have to be tipped off. They would have to know what he was planning. They would have to be under someone’s command, someone who knew how he worked, who had Carta connections. Someone who-

When it hit him, Solas dropped the note.

The word “ _Cadash_ ” echoed through the entire room.

As soon as he got back to his base, Solas went to sleep in his bed in the pursuit of having a conversation with an old friend.

* * *

 

The first time Solas visited Cadash’s dreams, there was nothing but an empty cave.

It wasn’t surprising; she was a dwarf and her connection to the Fade wasn’t more than a few months old. Her dreams had to be simple. When he’d pulled up and constructed Haven out of nothing, it’d been easy to wipe Cadash’s poor excuse for a dream away for his crafting. When Cadash became aware the entire exercise was a dream, he’d been fully prepared for her to approach him next with horror or fear.

It’d been a surprise when Cadash had almost sprinted down to talk to him afterwards, eyes bright, almost as interested as Solas had been when he learned dream walking himself so many ages ago. She’d taken to dreams more naturally than he thought possible, curious to how they worked, how the evolved, how he could run through the dreams of others so easily. Solas could still remember watching her scribble down notes, despairing that his ideal candidate for a student wasn’t even capable of being a mage.  

After he left Skyhold, Solas had held onto those talks of dreams and mists, hoping that Cadash was enjoying her cave dreams, no matter how dull he found them. When he removed her mark, he hoped she would get over being dreamless once more, figuring that taking the anchor would take her dreams as well.

It was clear such a thought was foolish. He should have followed up. There’d been no one like Cadash before, no one to bare the mark as a dwarf and live so long. For him to assume otherwise was a mistake.

Looking onto the entryway to Cadash’s dreams, Solas was beginning to understand how large of a mistake it was.

In the place where he expected a cave entrance was a door, large, and intricate. Made of solid oak, it looked sturdier than some of Skyhold’s doors. The glow it gave off implied enchantment, and while Solas wanted to think that impossible in the realm of the fade, he had a feeling if he tested it he’d be sorry.  Metal twisted upon each other in the place of a door handle, a complex lock that took Solas a few seconds to recognize as a variation of the lock Bianca used all those years ago. To top it all off was the sign on the door, beautiful engraving on a metal plaque.

“If you’re a demon, get the fuck out. Dwarf inside and thus fucking useless to you.”

Then a few lines below it.

“If you’re Solas, took you long enough:”

The combination of precise handwriting and clunky language confirmation enough that Cadash did this herself. How, Solas had no idea. Working with Dagna, perhaps? He closed his eyes, trying to remember how Bianca’s lock was solved, and once it came to him, undid the puzzle on the front of the door. The wood creaked as it opened, small candlelight appearing from within. Bracing himself, Solas stepped inside.

It was the cave, alright, but it was so changed that Solas could barely recognize it. In the middle was a desk, which had an ink well and some charcoal on it’s surface. There was natural light now, a hole in the top of the cave that functioned almost like a skylight. The walls were no adorned with dwarven style candles, veilfire the only sign that they weren’t the original. The walls, once rough, were smoothed down, cracks gone, almost reflecting the room around them where they weren’t covered with drawings.

There were maybe three spots not covered with drawings. No, drawings wasn’t the right word; they were more than that. Diagrams. Plans. Troop movements. Writing. It covered almost every surface, black ink dark against the sandstone walls. Solas could only imagine how much time I’d taken her to write them all. It had to take months. _She had to be doing this for months. Foiling him for months._ He took a step forward towards one of the walls to get a better look.

The trip wire caught him by surprise, the sound of its snap reaching his ears at the same time it wrapped around his foot. He found himself flipped in the air, the wire taut as it pulled him up by his ankles. Solas scrambled to throw a fire spell at it and as the wire snapped, he collapsed onto the cave floor, face first.

“You can do magic in the Fade. I should have known.” Solas looked up. Walking out of the shadows was Cadash, almost exactly like he remembered. Her left hand, long gone in the real world, was present here and she looked upon him with a smile that didn’t reach her hard eyes. “And here I was going to brag to Thom that I had the Dread Wolf hogtied in his own turf.”

“Inquisitor,” Solas said, trying to keep his voice level despite still being rather out of sorts. Cadash shook her head, heading towards the desk and pulling out a chair.

“Not anymore. Retired.” She sat down and lifted up her left hand. “The Council didn’t want a one handed dwarf in charge, even if she’s saved their ass a thousand times over.” With that sentence her left hand flickered out of existence, a stump in its place. She didn’t seem to be too shocked, still focusing on the intruder before her. “You know. _Orleasians_.”  

Solas could only stare. Her she was, doing what he thought impossible for anyone of her kind like she was a natural. No dwarf should be able to tamper with the Fade this way.

“Huh, I’ve shocked you into silence,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “I will admit, I’ve been looking forward to this. Sera told me the look on your face would be priceless.”

The idea of Sera deriving amusement from this was enough to get his mind working again. He scowled, picking himself off the floor, and dusted off his robes, even though he knew it would vanish as soon as he left the dream. “How did you manage this?”

“Picked up a book,” Cadash said. “You can learn a lot of stuff in books.”

“Be serious.”

“I am.” Cadash met his gaze, and for once, her red facial tattoos looked menacing. “Once you told me about dream walking, I started looking into it. Talked to Vivienne, Dorian and Dagna about getting some books. And once Coypheus was gone, I had time to really dig into it.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “There’s some really interesting stuff in there, by the way. You might want to give it a look.”

“I likely already know all the contents.”

Cadash rolled her eyes. “Clearly you don’t, given that I almost hoisted you into the air a minute ago.” She turned her gaze back to him, voice sharp. “That’s your problem. You always assume. You never learn anything when you assume.”

There was a beat of silence. Cadash took a deep breath, calming down just enough that her voice was level once more. “Anyway, there was a section on some humans who weren’t mages learning how to shift their dreams to their own liking. Sort of messing with your own personal portion of the Fade. So I looked into that more. Found some scraps with loose instructions. And after trial and error-” she gestured to the cave.

“You managed this with trial and error?” Solas’ voice was heavy with doubt.

“I had awhile to practice.” She chuckled. “When you took the mark away, I was worried all my hard work would go with it. Thankfully, I was wrong.”

Solas let the information sink in. Nothing Cadash was saying wasn’t true. He knew of people who could transform their own dreams; he was one of them. And it was feasible that anyone who dreamed could use the practice themselves in a more limited scope. But something to this expanse-

“This is impressive.” He settled on at last, paying the compliment where it was due. Cadash’s grin had a bitter edge.

“Considering we dwarves have no imagination or inventive skills? I suppose so.”

Solas looked at her in surprise. He was surprised that she remembered that comment; I’d only been once and bestowed in what he thought was a compliment. “I thought you were aware I did not mean you when I said that.”

“Oh, I was aware.” Cadash’s eyes narrowed. “Aware that you were calling my entire race idiots.” A smirk replaced her grin. “If you consider that a compliment, I pity any woman you try to flirt with. If there were any woman who could meet your standards.”

Solas’ eyes flashed. Cadash flinched, and she held up her hands in surrender. “Alright, too far. I apologize. No need to get personal.” She reached over for one of her charcoal sticks and got out of her chair. “You can leave if you want, now. It’s clear this is a useless endeavor.”

The glow in Solas’ eyes faded. “What endevour?”

Cadash was already standing across from a wall, looking upon a set of diagrams with intent. “Trying to convince you to change your mind. Thought I should try. Well, Thom thought I should.”

“Blackwall?” There was a surprise. If anything, Solas expected the warrior to be resolute in destroying him. Solas, after all, had cost his wife her arm and almost her life. Sure, Rainer had grown, but that wasn’t something Solas thought him capable of forgiving.

“The very one. He doesn’t want me to throw myself into another war before I tried the other option. He’s protective these days. As you’d guess.”

For once, Solas had no idea what she was talking about. “As I’d guess?”

Cadash turned to him, mild surprise on her face fading to genuine amusement. “Oh, I’d thought you heard. Spy network and all. Let me give you the full picture.” Her body flickered slightly, a ripple going through it as it adapted to Cadash’s new perception. The woman in front of him looked the same when her image stabilized, the arm still missing, and it wasn’t till she turned that Solas noticed the telling bump.

“You’re pregnant.”

“Yep,” Cadash said and the joy in her voice was the most positive emotion he’d gotten from her since entering her dream. “We were shocked when we found out; dwarf fertility is pretty low as it is. But I guess we got lucky. Or we’re just _persistent_.” She made a soft growling noise and Solas’ lips curled back in disgust. Cadash laughed in response. “Oh, you prude.”

“Please spare me,” Solas said. For a second, he felt like he was back in Skyhold two years ago. Back when he was Solas, the apostate mage, friend of the Inquisitor. Even though that life had been a lie, he still missed it. The second faded and soon he found himself thrust back into the present, his secrets bare to Cadash once more.

“Anyway,” Cadash said, patting her stomach. “We’re thinking Kal for a boy, Liddy for a girl. Their due in five months. Which means Thom isn’t eager to see me rushing into battle anytime in the near future. So-” she gestured to Solas. “Convincing.”

Solas felt his stomach plummet. What was it like to look at him in her position, to gaze upon the man who wanted to destroy the world her child would be born into to recreate his own? He couldn’t imagine. “I-”

“Unless that sentence is “ _I have given up my plans to destroy the world and will see you in Kirkwall to work out a sane solution to my problems_ ” It’d be wise if you stopped talking.”

Solas opened his mouth once more then closed it. He turned to the exit in the cave, glancing at the walls when he passed. He was unsurprised to find the entirety of the writing in dwarven characters. If Cadash had coded them as well, he wouldn’t blame her. Not that it mattered; he couldn’t enter this place unless Cadash was dreaming it. If he tried to spy on her notes, she would know.

“For the record,” Solas said, placing his hand against one of the blank spots on the stone. “I am deeply sorry.”

Cadash wasn’t looking at him anymore, sketching away at her wall. Her strokes were broad and quick. “If you were sorry, you wouldn’t be doing it.”

With that, he left. Within minutes he was back in his bed, covered in sweat.

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Cadash receives a hand woven baby blanket with golden and green thread.

She can’t bring herself to throw it out.

 


End file.
